I was deep in meditation. I asked, "Is there a plan for my life? What is the plan!?" I heard a voice say "It's in the key of B", and I saw the symbol for a flat in musical notation. The plan for my life is in the key of B flat! I understood this immediately. I have a record of Pete Fountain playing the clarinet. It's a clarinet tuned to the key of B flat. I like to improvise on my guitar along with the record. The plan for my life is: "We're improvising!".

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Friday, November 20, 2009

Mesmerism: How Science Adapts and Adopts Spiritual Phenomena

Over at Dean Radin's blog there is a
post
speculating that the study of
quantum entanglement may lead
mainstream science to the
discovery of telepathy.

It will be nice if and when that happens, but I doubt
one discovery will overthrow materialism.

The example of how mesmerism evolved into hypnotism shows
how science corrupts a spiritual phenomena
when it is adapted and
adopted by mainstream science.

Mesmerism is a paranormal phenomena first demonstrated by Franz
Mesmer a German physician who was born in the 18th century. The
mesmerist "mesmerized" the subject merely by waving his hands around the
person in a process called "making passes". This was believed to
demonstrate "animal magnetism". The subject came under the influence of
the mesmerist the way a steel needle may be magnetized by rubbing it
with a magnet. Being mesmerized was a form of spiritual healing and in
some cases could lead to psychic perceptions such as clairvoyance or
obedience to the thoughts of the mesmerist.

At first, mesmerism was considered complete hogwash by mainstream
scientists. In the long run, the facts couldn't be ignored when
patient
after patient underwent painless surgery after being mesmerized
in the days before anesthetics.
However, mainstream scientists digested only what they could swallow and
mesmerism evolved into modern hypnotism. Spiritual healing was
jettisoned or replaced with suggestion. Psychic perceiving was relegated
to a fringe anomaly and ignored by most scientists. Passes
were replaced
with a verbal induction into a deeply relaxed state.

(Therapeutic touch is a modern method of energy healing similar to
mesmerism in that the healer moves their hands near the patient but
without touching them in a manner that is similar to the
passes of mesmerism. However
the patient is not entranced.
This is practiced in some hospitals by nurses in the US, but
it is not generally accepted by mainstream science.)

From studying the example of mesmerism, one may speculate that
if telepathy is demonstrated by physicists, it will not end
science's materialist orientation.
Scientists studying quantum entanglement and telepathy may
discover the interface between the spirit
and the brain at the quantum level, but scientists may
not recognize the spirit's role in the
process of telepathy. Instead, they may start
searching for a physical link between brains. If this happens, it
could take another century or more for science to take the next step
towards full knowledge of our spiritual nature.

Will this happen? I hate to make predictions, especially about the
future, but historically there is very little reason to be optimistic
that one discovery will eliminate materialism. Science tends to evolve
gradually rather than drastically.

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Followers

Eminent Researchers

Charles Darwin: ... I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

Kurt Gödel: Materialism is false. ... The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived. ... The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit. ... I don’t think the brain came in the Darwinian manner. In fact, it is disprovable. ... Mind is separate from matter. ... There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.

Alan Turing: I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics): I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics): Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize for Physics): On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble

...

I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

Brian D. Josephson (Nobel Prize for Physics): What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena of the past which science has now happily incorporated within its scope.

Charles Robert Richet (Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine): 1. There is in us a faculty of cognition that differs radically from the usual sensorial faculties (Cryptesthesia). 2. There are, even in full light, movements of objects without contact (Telekinesis). 3. Hands, bodies, and objects seem to take shape in their entirety from a cloud and take all the semblance of life (Ectoplasms). 4. There occur premonitions that can be explained neither by chance nor perspicacity, and are sometimes verified in minute detail. Such are my firm and explicit conclusions.

Pierre Curie (Nobel Prize for Physics): It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?

Sir John Eccles (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine): I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.